Adding a house rule ability to a race

[Fuzzy]

Hi all, new to Hero Lab, and looking into tailoring it to some of our campaign's house rules. I've already tackled a few (social standing based ability modifier), custom feats, etc, but I'm now on what appears to be a little more complicated. I'm wanting to add a racial special that essentially adds a bonus weapon focus feat for one of two racially favored weapons. For instance, Halfling's favored weapons are Dagger, and Sling. So I'd like a Racial Special that give an option of just Dagger or Sling, and then it adds the Weapon Focus feat for that selected weapon.

The First problem is how do I actually add this racial special to the Race itself? Does this require completely replacing the rHalfling race with one that contains my ability, or is there a way to inject a new ability into the existing race? If I do create a new race, how would another import, for instance, also add abilities to the race? which replacement race takes precedence?

Second, I can make the Racial Special for each no problem, and I'm sure with some trial and error I can figure out how to bootstrap in the appropriate feat, but the first thing I'm coming up against is how to limit the selection list to just the two weapons for that race. I tried Selecting From 'All Weapons' and using a custom expression like ThingID.<wDagger> | ThingID.<wSling>, but it gives odd results (choices are Ranged Touch, and Unarmed Attack).

 

[Fuzzy]

Okay, so now it looks like I got the selection list figured out. Apparently, leaving the Restrict to set at -None- actually restricted it to the picks already on the character, so with no weapons added, Ranged Touch and Unarmed Attack were all that were there. Setting it to:

Select From...   '- None -'
Custom Expression  'ThingID.wDagger | ThingID.wSling'
Restrict First List To...   'All Things'

Seems to work.

 

[Mathias]

What you're looking for for replacements is the "Replaces Thing Id" box on the right-hand side - enter the Id of the original Halfling race there, and your version will now be a replacement for it.

Having the same thing replaced by two different .user files is a compile error - Hero Lab won't use either until you resolve the conflict.

Don't bootstrap the feat - figure out how the feat does its work - how the feat offers a selection of all weapons, and then how it applies its bonus, and figure out how to restrict that list to only two of them. Then, have the racial special offer the choice and apply the effects.

 

[Fuzzy]

What you're looking for for replacements is the "Replaces Thing Id" box on the right-hand side - enter the Id of the original Halfling race there, and your version will now be a replacement for it.

Having the same thing replaced by two different .user files is a compile error - Hero Lab won't use either until you resolve the conflict.

Don't bootstrap the feat - figure out how the feat does its work - how the feat offers a selection of all weapons, and then how it applies its bonus, and figure out how to restrict that list to only two of them. Then, have the racial special offer the choice and apply the effects.

Okay, so I got the replacement race figured out. Thanks for that. I understand I can just have the racial ability offer the same eval as the weapon focus script, that would be relatively easy, but then the user would be able to still add the same weapon focus feat again, since it won't trigger the uniqueness features. That's why I figured the best way would be to actually add the original feat via bootstrap.

 

[Fuzzy]

Nevermind, I just tried it out, and there's not really anything in there to prevent choosing the same Weapon Focus multiple times anyways. So I will just put the focus feat's eval right into the favored weapon ability.